Video: 'The Magic Christian' trailer

(Thursday, December 11, 1969, evening BST) — The Magic Christian, a British satirical black comedy film about the richest man in the world who adopts a homeless boy and sets out to prove that anyone, and anything, can be bought with money, premiered tonight at the Odeon Theatre in Kensington, London.

Directed by Joseph McGrath, the film starred Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr of The Beatles, John Cleese, Leonard Frey, Raquel Welch, Laurence Harvey, Spike Milligan, Wilfred Hyde-White, Graham Chapman, Ferdy Mayne, Isabel Jeans, Richard Attenborough, Roman Polanski, Christopher Lee and Yul Brynner.

Songs by Badfinger, written by Paul McCartney of The Beatles, were featured on the soundtrack.

Video: 'The Magic Christian / 1969'

The event was attended by Starr and his wife Maureen, as well as John Lennon of The Beatles and his wife, Yoko Ono. Also present was Princess Margaret.

Lennon and Ono both were black capes, and before the film held banners in the foyer proclaiming “BRITAIN MURDERED HANRATTY,” in reference to James Hanratty, a British criminal who was one of the final eight people in the UK to be executed before capital punishment was effectively abolished.